May 15, 2006

Attack of the Clones

Today at ITU we had a discussion on cloning and casual games. The first thing that I do after returning to my office is open up The Escapist and find an article about cloning and casual games.rIt is very easy to enter in the blame-game: who copied whom; who was inspired by whom. The classic example is the Zuma/Luxor/Puzz Loop.rThe article also accuses PlayFirst/GameLab's super-popular casual game Diner Dash as a "a straightforward imitation of Betty's Beer Bar by Mystery Studio. (Mystery is a two-man team based in, believe it or not, Uruguay.)" I know for a fact that Betty's Beer Bar was released before Diner Dash and it is true that the mechanics are quite similar. Personally, I am not interested that much into figuring out if this is plagiarism or not (even though I am biased towards the Uruguayan game industry. Go Uruguay Go!). I am more interested by understanding why Diner Dash was such a hit and Betty's Beer Bar (BBB) did not do so well. Multiple hypothesis are available. A plausible one is that BBB dealt with alcohol, a taboo subject in the States, where overeating is not a problem but overdrinking is. As Jesper Juul pointed out today, it may also be because of the game's narrative: Diner Dash's main character, Flo, escapes from her office job to start her own chain of restaurants (this may help fuel the fantasies of the mythical +35 old women who play casual games at the office).rIn any case, The Escapist's article is worth reading. And congrats to Mystery Studio for helping to get the word "Uruguay" and "Innovation" published together on the same phrase!